Wednesday 1 July 2009

Moviestorm memory problems - workaround


If your computer is above the minimum spec, you may want to increase the memory available to Moviestorm, so that it is less likely to run out of memory.

Possible symptoms of Moviestorm running out of memory include:
  • Significant slowdown after using Moviestorm for a while, or when going to the Cutting Room or the Dressing room.
  • 'Error switching scene' messages when loading or changing scenes.
First, ensure your Moviestorm install is updated to 1.1.6 or later.

PC:
  • Find the install directory for Moviestorm (C:/Program Files/Moviestorm General Release, if you went with the default).
  • From that folder, browse to boot, and open boot.properties in a text editor (such as Notepad).
  • Edit the following line (or create it, if it does not exist):
  • heapsize=256M
    or
    heapsize=300M
  • Change the default of 256M to a larger number (we recommend that you dont increase it above 1/2 your system RAM - e.g. 512M on a 1 gig memory, or 1024M on a 2 gig memory).

Mac:
  • Use Finder to find Applications/Moviestorm 1.1
  • Right click (or control click) the application and select 'Browse Contents', and look in the Contents folder
  • Open info.plist in the Properties List Editor
  • Expand the java tab
  • In the VMOptions property, find the bit that says -Xmx256M
  • Change the default of 256M (or 300M) to a larger number (we recommend that you don't increase it above 1/2 your system RAM - e.g. 512M on a 1 gig memory, or 1024M on a 2 gig memory)
That should help!

Of course, if you only have 512Mb RAM to start with, you're going to have problems regardless. Sorry, but there's not a lot we can do about that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a 64-bit system running Windows XP, and 8 Gig of ram.

However, Moviestorm runs with a *32 next to it in the process list.

I'm not sure how it all works but either I should set memory allocation for moviestorm at either 2 gig or 4 gig. Which should I use?

snorkel said...

Try 512M for now. It should be plenty. A 32-bit process will never see more than 4G in principle, and in reality Windows will steal 2G anyway (unless you're running XP with /3GB in the boot loader).

We devs have a handle on what's gobbling memory. We have plans to reduce it but it's not a small job. By the end of the process, 256M will probably be ok again, so 512M for now will be more than sufficient.